ILLUSIONISTS AND GHOSTS
Not What You Think!
The illusionists are the artists on the Human Farm. These artists dabble in signs, symbolism, and imagery. They are not the creators of these signs, symbols, and imagery—only their users.
Anyone can be an artist, and anyone can become a top artist in the world, as long as they are willing to practice the signs, symbols, and imagery of their era and follow the orders of the super-creators and their supporting systems.
Once a person embarks on the path of the artist, they must tap into the source of all illusions. That source is death.
Undead Businesses
Michelangelo, Goethe, and Edison… are not real persons. They are based on individuals who lived long ago, yes. But the ‘Michelangelo’, ‘Goethe’, and ‘Edison’ we speak of today are not those deceased individuals—they are their undying legacies. These legacies are elaborate marketing constructs that, in total, often required thousands of unnamed contributors and millions of work hours. This is the business of the dead.
In Gogol’s novel Dead Souls, the protagonist acquires the identities of dead people in order to collect their taxes. The dead generate passive income not just for Russian soul-snatchers. A recent report by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency revealed that 30 million deceased citizens were still collecting social security payments.
Deceased celebrities from the 1970s and 1980s are earning more money than ever in the 2020s. Elvis Presley, the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” who died prematurely in 1977, now generates $500 million in license fees. Similarly, Michael “The King of Pop” Jackson, who died broke in 2009, is now making $600 million in sales and is valued at $3.3 billion.
In the art world, it could be said that the living work for the dead—and this is not merely a figure of speech. Walt Disney, founder of The Walt Disney Company, continues to inspire his visual storytelling empire from beyond the grave, generating $200 billion in revenue. The dead mogul still employs 200,000 of the living.
Whether at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Universal Music Group in Hilversum, Netherlands, or Pearson Publishing in London, your first impression will likely be a gallery of dead painters, dead musicians, and dead writers. This is how cultural institutions make their money: by selling the works of the deceased.
Like the countless pharaohs, muses, and creators before them, these legacies were never the result of one famous individual’s efforts. They were the product of collectives, historians, and governments.
Michelangelo’s Mona Lisa was one average portrait among thousands from its time.
Goethe’s East-West Diwan is one unremarkable poem among thousands from its era.
Edison’s success was not a single inventor but a team of a thousand assistants.
Do not worship the dead.
Insatiable Ghouls
Once a person achieves fame, they soon claim to have discovered light, the magnet, and the steak knife. Not content with ‘master’, they want to become ‘legion’.
There are no limits to human vanity and opportunism. A songwriter becomes famous for a song, then demands recognition for three songs, four albums, eleven concerts, a music label, three fashion labels, seven world records, and even the founding of cancer research.
An art dealer who lends their name to a cargo ship soon wants to name the ports.
A millionaire buys a media empire and soon feels entitled to a million headlines, all the headlines, and associations with every notable name at Forbes Magazine.
Whatever they accomplish, it is never enough.
A painter with a full house in Leiden soon desires real estate in Japan, Indonesia, India, China, Asia, America, Western imperialism, the French Revolution, and, finally, world history.
They say capitalism is the exploitation of labor. Art is the exploitation of the senses.
As soon as a man finds himself recognized, he wants his partner recognized as well—in fact, all his partners, his good looks, his children, his friends, their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers, until his name is intertwined with the history of his nation.
Our rulers exploit this principle to control art and produce fake celebrities before other nations can. Western nations have become idol fabrication powerhouses.
Idols
